I'm pretty sure that the #Fediverse is one of the first social networks I've been on that didn't ever ask me to betray any of the people in my address book.
We talk a lot about #Lemmy, but has anyone heard of #Aether? Just found it on @privacytools. I just want to know if anyone has used it and what their experience was like.
It appears that it is peer-to-peer but uses its own protocol unfortunately and not #ActivityPub.
Hi, everyone. I've just released version 2.24 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C, that includes the following features and bugfixes:
Sending non-public messages is now much easier: a checkbox to post a message to only those people mentioned in the message body has been added.
Fixed an over-optimization bug that caused some mentioned recipients to be skipped.
Added some new administrator tweaks: email notifications can be globally disabled.
I'm happy to announce version 2.21 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C. This time there are a bunch of things:
Users can now specify an expire time for the entries in their timelines (both their own and others').
Added support for sending notifications (replies, follows, likes, etc.) via Telegram.
Followers can now be deleted (from the people page in the web interface). Yes, to stop sending in vain your valuable and acute posts to those accounts that disappeared long ago and flood the log with connection errors.
The internal way of processing connections have been rewritten to be more efficient or, as technical people say, "scalable". This way, snac is much faster in processing outgoing connections and less prone to choke on an avalanche of incoming messages. This is a big step towards the secret and real purpose of the creation of this software: being able to host the account of #StephenKing when he finally leaves that other site.
The note action from the command-line tool can also accept the post content from the standard input.
Usage tips: never reply to toxic people (apply the MUTE button to them). Enjoy a coffee. Smell the sea. Listen to Mahler. Spend a bit less time in social media and a bit more with your loved ones.
Updated my old formatting fix for the WordPress ActivityPub plugin to now be its own little plugin that uses a custom shortcode to output posts the way I like them.
Feel free to take the code and tweak as needed for your own nefarious purposes.
Fun guide on creating an alias domain for your Mastodon account. That is, if you happened to be @alis and wanted (say) @me to redirect to that account, this is how you’d do it.
(It works, incidentally, and takes about two minutes to set up. Try it!)
2022 war ein extrem spannendes Jahr! Ein Rückblick!
CloudFest Hackathon
Im März hatte ich die Chance ein Thema für den CloudFest Hackathon zu leiten/betreuen (Danke an Carole und Alain). Auch wenn das Projekt anders lief als ich das insgeheim geplant hatte, hab ich sehr viel über UX gelernt und großartigen Input bekommen, den ich leider noch nicht komplett umsetzen konnte.
2022 kamen leider nur drei neunetzcast Folgen zustande, dafür haben wir (aus meiner Sicht) zwei extrem spannende Ausgaben zu Mastodon, ActivityPub und dem Fediverse gemacht.
Eine der Zentralen Fragen des Podcasts: Warum Walled Gardens wie Facebook, Twitter oder TikTok immer noch den Markt der sozialen Netzwerke dominieren, während z.B. im IOT Bereich massiv am Thema Standards und Interoperabilität gearbeitet wird.
These: Der Schmerz ist einfach noch nicht groß genug!
…und als hätte Elon Musk unseren Podcast gehört, hat er promt für den nötigen Schmerz gesorg und viele Twitter-User in die Arme von Mastodon getrieben, was vielleicht der letzte Tropfen war, den das Fediverse Fass gebraucht hat!
Außerdem hat sich ein alter Podcast-Freund zu uns gesellt, mit dem ich seit Jahren nicht mehr gesprochen hatte! Es hat großen Spaß gemacht, Carsten und Marcel und ich freue mich auf nächstes Jahr!
ActivityPub für WordPress
Dank Elon Musk haben sich aber auch die Download-Zahlen von meinem ActivityPub (WordPress) Plugin und meine Follower auf Mastodon mindestens verzehnfacht! Das hat mich beflügelt wieder aktiver am Plugin zu arbeiten und es kamen ein paar großartige Änderungen dabei rum. Alex Kirk hat beispielsweise sein friends Plugin so angepasst, dass man auch Freunde über ActivityPub abonnieren kann.
Um Menschen auf Mastodon oder ähnlichen Plattformen über dein eigenes WordPress zu folgen, kannst du das Friends-Plugin für WordPress benutzen, das über das Plugin Beiträge abruft, in deinem eigenen WordPress anzeigt und es so zu einer eigenen Fediverse-Instanz macht.
Es stehen aber noch weitere großartige Features in den Startlöchern (wie z.B. Djangos „Federated Comments“ Vorschlag) die aber noch etwas angepasst werden müssen.
Ich war im November (2022) zu Gast beim „Wo wir sind ist vorne„-Podcast und durfte über alles reden, worüber ich hier auch schreibe 🙂
Indie Web, Open Web, Websemantics, Microformats, Open Graph, Schema.org!“
Mit unserem Gast Matthias Pfefferle verschaffen wir uns einen Überblick über den aktuellen Stand der Websemantics und wie sie dazu beitragen das Web besser zu strukturieren und durchsuchbar zu machen. Dazu lernen wir, warum die eigene Website immer noch der beste Weg ist im Web zu publizieren, sprechen über den Twitter-Meltdown + Fediverse und zum Abschluss gibt es noch Blasmusik. Wir hatten Spaß. Und ihr?
Ich kenne Moritz ( @MoritzGiessmann ) ein bisschen und habe den Podcast auch schon seit einer Weile abonniert… zu meiner Schande muss ich aber gestehen, dass ich bisher nur die Live-Steams geschaut („geschaut“ ist vielleicht auch übertrieben… ich habe ein bisschen rein ge-zappt…), aber noch nie eine Audio-Folge gehört habe…
DIE MEISTEN BEITRÄGE SIND ÜBER 2 STUNDEN LANG!
Aus perspektive des Gastes, verstehe ich jetzt aber warum die Folgen so lange sind! Die beiden haben einfach ’ne menge Spaß an dem was sie tun und eine Aufnahme ist viel mehr als „nur“ das Fachsimpeln zu einem Nerd-Thema. Von den 3 Stunden, die ich mit Moritz und Constantin geredet habe, geht es wahrscheinlich „nur“ 60 min um die oben genannten Themen… in der restlichen Zeit haben wir uns über Bier, Spam, Solar-Panele, Blasmusik und Terence Hill unterhalten (und ich hatte mich anfangs noch gewundert warum sie mich gefragt haben ob ich die ganze Folge dabei sein will).
Es war auf alle Fälle sehr lustig und kurzweilig… Ich hoffe die Beiden laden mich irgendwan nochmal ein und kann jedem nur wärmstens empfehlen den Podcast zu abonnieren!!
Hot take/rant time for #ActivityPub with the news that #Meta plans to dip their toe in the water.
I would view Meta as an existential threat to a non-corporate, AP-based #fediverse in large part because of the immaturity of and lack of interoperability in the AP spec itself.
Why?
Because when you have that big of a fish involved in your space made up of small players, the big fish gets to set the rules unless you have some pretty strong protections in place.
One of the most exciting tech developments at the moment is the advent of the #Solid web standard, which lets people "store their data securely in decentralized data stores called Pods. Pods are like secure personal web servers for your data."
Is it technically possible for #ActivityPub to support the Solid standard? Or this would be something apps like #Mastodon should implement?
I'm a bit embarrassed of announcing version 2.22 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C, which fixes some bugs, one of them pretty nasty:
Fixed a bug with the Delete button in the web interface: sometimes, instead of the post (as the user intended), the follower was deleted instead 🤦
Fixed a bug in the command-line option follow (and probably others), that made it fail silently if there was no running server.
Fixed a crash under OpenBSD (a recent change needed a new permission to the pledge() call that was forgotten).
Is there a federated wiki-hosting project? Something that allows you to edit many independently-hosted #wikis with one account? Preferably with ActivityPub integration for easy sharing on the fediverse?
If we want the network of apps to grow, developers needs to talk together and find consensus. This initiative looks like it's moving in the right direction!
I don't think people appreciate the role that #OperaSoftware played in fostering the #OpenWeb and #IndieWeb during the first #browserWar (when the #OperaBrowser was still built on their proprietary #Presto engine), and a fortiori the role it had in their demise (when they switched to being “just another #WebKit/#Blink skin”), despite their browser never even reaching a 3% market share.
I have no problems imagining a different timeline, where #ActivityPub had been already a better-established thing, and the demo #OperaUnite applications for media and photo sharing had implemented basic support for it, resulting in self-hosted lightweight alternatives to #PixelFed or #FunkWhale.
And this is actually the vision I have an ultimate goal for the #Fediverse, one where, thanks also to client support, hosting and participation become even more trivial than setting up a static website.
Sometimes I wonder how different things could have been if the timing had been different. When #OperaUnite was first announced, #ActivityPub wasn't a thing yet, StatusNet had just been born, diaspora* didn't exist, and the only other major bidirectional federated protocol was XMPP, that had existed for 10 years and was in the process of being #EmbraceExtendExtinguish-ed by Facebook and Google.
Well, that's it. My #akkoma instance social.fellr.net is no more. It couldn't even delete my old account properly without getting a timeout on the database. Man, I really don't like the way it's designed. I know it's better for the #fediverse if not every instance is #mastodon, but at the moment there is nothing better in terms of reliability. Again, #gotosocial is very promising, but needs a bit more features. They're coming though! #fediadmin#meta
If #activitypub is implemented on #tumblr I wonder if subblogs will be part of the #fediverse in addition to the main blog. I know I'm ignorant on the technical side of things, but it would be great if subblogs could be part of the Fediverse as well...
Very cool how adding an editable text label with the :mastodon: logo gets the biggest centralized code hosting site — an abusive one at that, feeding all your code to train a Microsoft-owned AI — loads of free publicity around here. 🤔
Instead, I'm gonna send some love to @Codeberg and @forgejo, since they might actually implement federation for code hosting systems. :blobcatthinksmart:
As in: joining fedi, instead of just paying lip service like that other code hosting site.
I'm happy to announce version 2.25 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in ANSI C. These are the changes:
Federation with other instances have been improved by collecting shared inbox information from input messages more thoroughly.
Fixed an obscure bug that caused connection rejections from some instances.
Some rules regarding incoming messages have been tightened; messages that are not related to the user are not added to the timeline. This has to be implemented because some ill-behaving ActivityPub implementations were found injecting unwanted messages to user inboxes.
Messages from MUTEd users are rejected as soon as possible with a 403 Forbidden HTTP status.
Fixed a minor bug regarding the scope of the 'Update' activity (edited posts were sent to more recipients that it should).
More aggressive input sanitization (some posts were found that included strange ASCII control codes).
Added "Open Graph" HTML meta tags for better previsualization of snac links from other social media.